I could barely meet her eyes. “I remember.”

“I thought that with Ezra gone you would find yourself again, the boy I fell in love with. I so wanted that. I wanted you to be strong and I thought that you would be, so I waited. But you didn’t come. For a year and a half, I didn’t hear a word from you, not a sign, and I had to deal with losing you all over again. A year and a half, Jackson! I almost made it, too. But then, you bastard, you came back again, last week, and in spite of everything, I let myself believe. And why not? I asked myself. You felt it. Eighteen months and we still had the same passion, like no time had passed. But it had. I had finally pulled myself together, moved on. I had a life. I was as happy as I’d ever hoped to be. It wasn’t bliss, but I could face the day. Then you showed up, out of nowhere, and you tore me apart.”

She looked at me and her eyes were dry. “I don’t think I can forgive you for that. But it taught me something, an ugly, brutal lesson that I’ve taken to heart.”

“Please don’t,” I said, but she continued ruthlessly, impaling me with her words.

“There’s something untouchable in you, Jackson, some part of you that is a wall between us; it’s tall and it’s thick, and it hurts when I hit it. I’ve left blood on that wall. I can’t beat against it anymore. I won’t.”

“What if you didn’t have to?”

Vanessa looked surprised. “You admit there is a wall?”

“I know what it’s made of,” I said.

“What?” Her voice rang with doubt.

“Once I tell you, there’s no taking it back. It’s ugly and I’m ashamed of it, but I’ve tried to tell you.”

“Why didn’t you?” Vanessa asked.

I hesitated. “Because you won’t love me anymore.”

“It couldn’t be that bad.”

“It’s worse. It’s the reason for everything bad between us. It’s why I can’t open up to you. It’s why I let Ezra talk me into marrying Barbara, because I couldn’t tell you this thing. Even now it scares me.” I looked into her eyes and knew that I had never been so naked. “You’ll hate me for it.”

“How can you say that?”

“Because I hate myself.”

“Don’t say that.”

“But I do.”

“For God’s sake, Jackson. Why?”

“Because I failed you when you needed me most, and because the reason that you love me is a lie.” I reached across the desk and seized her hand. “I’m not what you think I am, Vanessa. I never have been.”

“You’re wrong. Whatever you think this is, you’re wrong, because I know exactly who and what you are.”

“You don’t.”

“I do.” She retrieved her hand. “You’re not as complicated as you think you are,” she said.

“So, you want to hear this?”

“I need to,” she said, and I understood. There’s a difference between need and want. In spite of her brave words, she did not want to hear this.

I walked around the desk, and she stiffened. I feared that she would turn away, yet an animal stillness held her. She dwindled into herself and a mirrored glaze moved across her eyes. Then I filled the space before her, a clumsy giant, and in the shadow of her open, naked soul, I recognized the remarkable strength that was required to love me for so long and with such conviction.

I sat on the desk, but she would not allow our eyes to meet. I wanted to put my arms around her, knew better, and took her hands instead. Some emotion made them limp-fear, I guessed-and I knew that she had withdrawn to someplace inside herself. I presumed to tilt her chin and seek her in the depths of those mirrored eyes.

“Vanessa,” I said.

Our faces were inches apart, her breath a feathered touch, and as she opened herself to me, her hands closed slowly around my own. I wanted to apologize, to explain, and to beg forgiveness, but none of that came out.

“I have always loved you,” I said. “From the very first time I saw you. And I have never stopped loving you, not even for an instant.”

She began to tremble and the façade that she’d carved onto her face crumbled as if made of sand. Tears filled her eyes, and I knew that I could hold nothing back; but emotion closed my throat, and in silence her tremors grew, until she tilted forward and leaned into me. She shook, and I armored her with my body; then the dam of her resolve burst and she began to cry, so that when she spoke, there was a distance between her words, as if they traveled from a deep place and required all the fuel of her breath to make themselves heard. I almost missed what she said.

“I told myself,” she began, and then had to start over. “I told myself that I would not cry.”

I held her tighter. I could not think clearly, so I murmured to her as I would to a child. “It’s okay,” I told her. “Everything will be okay.”

I wanted to believe the words, so I repeated them. I did so time and again, like that long-ago day in the barn at Stolen Farm, when words and body heat seared our souls into something resplendent. It could be like that again, and so I told her: “Everything will be okay.”

I did not hear the door open. I neither saw my wife nor heard her, not until she spoke.

“Well,” she said, and her voice sundered the paper home I’d built with my words. “Isn’t this cozy.”

It was not a question.

Vanessa pulled away, turned to the door and the voice that could not have sounded crueler. Barbara stood ten feet away, flowers in one hand, a bottle of wine in the other.

“I must say, Work, I’m a little surprised.” She tossed the flowers in a wastebasket and placed the wine on a side table.

“What are you doing here, Barbara?” There was no mistaking the anger in my voice. Vanessa backed away, but Barbara went on as if she had not heard me.

“The way you talk about this little slut at home, I thought you’d used her up.” Barbara’s eyes moved over Vanessa as if they could focus heat and char flesh at will. “I guess you wanted one more fling for the road.” I saw Vanessa wilt, and felt my heart break. “For old time’s sake.” Barbara stepped closer, her eyes still hot on Vanessa. “I guess I was wrong.”

“That’s not true,” I said. “None of it.” But already Vanessa was heading for the door. Her name passed my lips, but my feet were slow. She passed Barbara before I could reach her, and my wife’s words slipped through the thin armor of her exposed back.

“Did you really think you could compete with me?”

Vanessa turned, caught my eye one time, then slammed the door shut behind her. Barbara yelled at the silent door.

“Stay away from my husband, you white trash whore!”

Suddenly, I did not know myself. Rage carried me to Barbara’s side and tightened my hand on her arm. Rage spun her around. Rage lifted my hand. But I brought it down. I slapped her so hard, I knocked her to the floor. Then rage filled me again, threatened to kick her, to crush her into utter and silent submission. Rage wanted blood. Rage wanted payback. And the rage was strong.

I had to fight it down, crush it through sheer will. Otherwise, I might have killed her.

Barbara must have seen it burn in my eyes, for she did not say a word until the killing light dimmed. In its absence, she saw what she expected to see, the man she’d been married to for ten years. The empty man. The shell.

If she’d seen the truth, she would have never opened her mouth to me again.

“Are you finished?” she asked. “Finished acting like what you think a man should be?”

“Is that supposed to hurt?”

“Truth sometimes does.”

“Listen, Barbara. I told you before. We’re finished.”

She smoothed the back of her hand against her cheek. “We’re through when I say we’re through. I’ll not be made a laughingstock. Not by that woman and not by you.”

“You are so like my father,” I said, and put my hand on the door. She smiled, and I stared, amazed that I’d not seen it sooner. She was like my father. Same values. Same detachment.

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” she said, climbing to her feet, straightening her clothing with a contemptuous air.